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Adobe details its open source code editor for web developers

Adobe has published details of Brackets, its new code editor for web development using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The editor has been built on these same web technologies and is now available as open source. Adobe has made its code available under the MIT licence and is inviting the developer community to get involved.

The company has already shown Brackets at several events and the editor's code has been available on GitHub for some time. Until now, Adobe has not been actively promoting it; however the project has now reached a sufficient level of maturity for the company to publicly launch Brackets, though its development is not yet complete.

Brackets is relatively small (a little over 30MB) and starts up quickly, and its interface has been kept "simple yet productive". Currently, Brackets offers "Quick Edit" inline editing, breakpoint setting and a live connection to Google Chrome. With the Live File Preview, developers can see real-time changes to CSS as they type; support for other browsers will be added at a later date.

A quick introduction to Brackets

The editor also includes an Extension API allowing developers to add functionality. Early projects include integrating support for JSHint, CSSLint and W3C validation. A browser version of Brackets is also planned, so that web developers do not have to leave their traditional working environment.